Bellingham Comments from Digital Recorder - EISs for the Proposed ...

GATEWAY PACIFIC TERMINAL EIS SCOPING HEARING VOL. II
COURT REPORTER: BETH DRUMMOND PROCEEDING DATE: October 27, 2012
Page 41
1 seen.
2 MS. STRAUSZ-CLARK: 19, 20, and 21. 19 you're at
3 the microphone. 20 and 21 you're at the desk. Please state
4 your name for the record.
5 THE SPEAKER: My name is Klara Lee Weis from
6 Bellingham, and I'd like to talk about an incident that
7 happened on September 20th, 19 -- 2012.
8 And we were coming to Bellingham, to Salt Spring
9 Island, just crossing Rosario Strait coming out of a total
10 whiteout. And as our boat was coming across, coming out of
11 this whiteout, and we looked up to the right, and there was
12 this pitch black, mushroom cloud. And we checked our
13 finder, you know, direction finders on the map trying to
14 find out,"What was that cloud?" And it was a coal cloud.
15 And I'd never seen one. I'd seen pictures of them, but this
16 time I actually experienced it.
17 And we looked and watched. And I was in such
18 shock, actually, that it took me a while to run down and try
19 to think, Camera, camera; run down and get your camera.
20 So I ran down and got a camera. And by the time
21 I got back up there, I was watching this cloud dissipate
22 from the area of Tsawwassen, so the coal channel was right
23 there, Tsawwassen. And we watched this black cloud
24 dissipate into grayer and grayer and bigger and bigger
25 coming right toward our boat, and watching it going all over